Abstract

GODINHO, Marta Queiroz; MARQUES, Maria Emília  and  PINHEIRO, Catarina Bray. A expressão no Rorschach dos fenómenos transitivos e do espaço potencial na personalidade borderline. Aná. Psicológica [online]. 2009, vol.27, n.3, pp.349-363. ISSN 0870-8231.

This study uses the Rorschach method in order to understand the characteristics of both transitional phenomena and potential space in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The approach to the aforementioned concepts follows respectively Winnicott and Ogden’s theories about transitional phenomena and potential space psychopathology. For a better understanding of both concepts in the context of BPD, we have articulated them with motherhood function and Green’s white anguish. Inter-subjective and dynamic features of the Rorschach Method, both of which call for a double working mode (perceptive and projective), are herewith used eventually leading to a deeper understanding of the existing relational dynamics “internal-external” in the psychic space of borderline patients. Thus, the main concepts under analysis are interpreted in the light of a literature review, which is duly articulated with Rorschach elements. In this context we have applied the Rorschach method to a female individual who had been previously diagnosed BPD. The analysis performed to the protocol demonstrates the patient’s ability to apply very basic strategies in order to enter into a minimum contact with external objects, though she is not capable of establishing an inter-subjective relation between fantasy and reality or between the internal world and the external world. The patient with BPD experiences the Rorschach image as if it was a real object that bears the function (holding) and the (cheering) characteristics of a transitional object. These strategies points to an approximation to a potential space, i.e., a pre-potential space.

Keywords : Borderline; Motherhood function; Potential space; Rorschach; Transitional phenomena.

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